Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

Monday, October 23, 2006

More Campus Jihad

3. More on Neve Gordon's guru:Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein and Holocaust Denial:http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=245When the Arab terrorist interviewing him claims there was never anyHolocaust and at most 50,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis, Finkelsteinhas no response other than to tout his own "books".But he calls "MEMRI" a nazi group.

4. October 23, 2006Campus Jihad

By ANTHONY GLEESOctober 23, 2006; Page A15

LONDON -- U.K. intelligence officials have just provided a chillingassessment of the terrorist threat Britain faces. The country has become"al Qaeda target No. 1," security sources told me, confirming last week'spress reports. Intelligence services now judge Britain's "home grown"terrorists to be organized, trained and controlled either directly fromPakistan or via Pakistani networks in Britain.

Until now, intelligence services thought British Islamist terrorists hadno hard links to al Qaeda despite sharing its ideology. "Clean skins" inthe security jargon, they were believed to have acted alone or inself-constructed cells. This theory was the product of what MI5 thought itknew about the terrorists before last year's July 7 bombings, which wasfar too little. Just two months before the attacks, MI5's Joint TerrorismAnalysis Center concluded, "there is not a group with both the currentintent and capability to attack the U.K."

The ringleaders of the July 7 bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan and ShahzadTanweer, both former students at Leeds Metropolitan University, showed upon MI5's radar on as many as nine occasions before the attacks. Accordingto Whitehall sources, credible intelligence indicated that Mr. Khan hadvisited Pakistan between November 2003 and February 2004 and sought tocontact al Qaeda. But MI5 discounted the significance of these visits atthe time and only started taking them more seriously early this year. TheLondon bombers' connections to Pakistan were initially dismissed asharmless, requiring no further analysis. It was "obvious," securitysources explained in the aftermath of the attacks, that people ofPakistani descent would visit "their families" back home or take a "longholiday or gap year" there. The generally accepted theory was that theterrorists had simply used information from the Internet to build theirorganic peroxide bombs.

Senior military intelligence officers now dismiss this line as well,believing the bombers received crucial weapons training in Pakistan. Theyargue that if Britain is now al Qaeda's primary target, it makes sense tolook much more carefully at the Pakistan dimension and also at the linksbetween virulent Islamic groups in Pakistan and the U.K. Many BritishIslamic colleges have ties to fundamentalist Pakistanis. Other links existto extremist Kashmiri groups, in turn allegedly connected to al Qaeda orthe Pakistani secret service.

MI5 has hugely upped its game, as recent arrests show. But MI5 alsobelieves that the number of extremists is rising and not just because itnow knows better where to look for them. MI5 keeps very close tabs on morethan 1,000 extremists; 14,000 British Muslims are considered potentialterrorist threats, security sources told me.

I believe a significant number get radicalized and recruited on universitycampuses. At least 13 convicted Islamist terrorists and four suicidebombers have been students at British universities. Radical Islamiststudent societies make full use of university resources. They operate Websites, hosted by university servers, which direct visitors toorganizations that glorify jihad and terror. These "religious" groups aregiven "prayer rooms" on campus, which are also used to disseminateextremist literature and DVDs. Muslim students concerned about thesedevelopments tell me that at many of these Islamic societies terrorism isportrayed as justified acts of "resistance." A leading imam in Birminghamoften preaches on British campuses that the London bombers have to be seenas "martyrs."

Organizations like Hizb Ut Tahrir and Al Muhajiroun, which advocate aworld caliphate, demand that Britain adopt the Shariah and express aviolent hatred for the West and Jews, have repeatedly tried to gainstudent converts at the University of East Anglia. It is only thanks to acourageous campus imam that their infiltration attempts have been thwartedso far. His colleague at London Metropolitan University, Sheikh MusaAdmani, repeatedly warns about Islamic radicalization at his and otherLondon campuses. Just two months ago, the head of an Islamic studentsociety and several fellow students at London Metropolitan were chargedwith planning to smuggle explosives on a plane bound for America. Yetuniversity authorities usually consider these societies as "religiousgatherings," and thus off limits.

Government minister Ruth Kelly two weeks ago urged universities to monitortheir students more carefully and report signs of extremism to thesecurity services. But many British universities are reluctant to step upsecurity. Universities U.K., an association of British universities,criticized Ms. Kelly's proposals as "unreasonable," saying "there aredangers in targeting one particular group within our diverse communities."When I suggested last year similar measures the government now proposes, Iwas myself attacked by Universities U.K. The vice chancellor from theUniversity of Sunderland asked my own vice chancellor to "shut me up." Iwas threatened with legal action if the name of a particular universitywas mentioned in connection with terrorism. Unfortunately, my researchshowed that Islamic radicalization is a threat on campuses nation-wide.

But British universities prefer burying their heads in the sand ofpolitical correctness. When the Foreign Office invited 100 academics tobid for 1.3 million of government funds to participate in acounter-radicalization program, the academics said no. John Gledhill,chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists, welcomed their move,saying last week that "it did appear to be encouraging researchers toidentify subjects and groups involved with terrorism . . . that could beinterpreted as encouraging them to become informers." Martha Mundy, alecturer at the London School of Economics, dismissed the government plansas having "an overtly security-research agenda" starting from the (false)premise that there is a "link between Islamism, radicalization andterrorism."

Is Ms. Mundy seriously saying there is no connection between Islamism andterrorism? "Security" is not a dirty word, even if totalitarian regimeshave abused it. Every British university subscribes to the 1997 DearingReport, which states that the "aim of higher education is to play a majorrole in shaping a democratic, civilized and inclusive society." This isthe basis on which the British taxpayer agrees to fund them.

Academic institutions should surely help protect Britain from those whoclearly do not believe in democracy, are not civilized, and who try toharm us. Now that we are the prime target for Islamist terror, Britain'suniversities must get real.

Mr. Glees is director for the Brunel Center for Intelligence and SecurityStudies.

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116155302363600240.html

NEW YORK--Politics makes artists stupid. Take "My Name Is Rachel Corrie,"the one-woman play cobbled together from the diaries, emails andmiscellaneous scribblings of the 23-year-old left-wing activist who wasrun over by an Israeli Army bulldozer in 2003 while protesting thedemolition of a Palestinian house in the Gaza Strip. Co-written anddirected by Alan Rickman, one of England's best actors, "Rachel Corrie"just opened off-Broadway after a successful London run. It's anill-crafted piece of goopy give-peace-a-chance agitprop--yet it's beingperformed to cheers and tears before admiring crowds of theater-savvy NewYorkers who, like Mr. Rickman himself, ought to know better.

So why don't they? Because Palestine is the new Cuba, a political causewhose invocation has the effect of instantaneously anesthetizing the upperbrain functions of those who believe in it. Take Mr. Rickman, whoevidently intended "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" to be a pro-Palestinianequivalent of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Alas, wishful thinking is not thestuff of exciting theater. The script is disjointed to the point ofincoherence, the staging crude and blatant, while Megan Dodds'sperformance as Rachel Corrie is frankly cartoonish.

Part of Ms. Dodds's problem, however, is that the real-life character sheis portraying was unattractive in the extreme, albeit pathetically so.Whimsical, humorless and--above all--immature, Corrie burbles on about herfeelings ("The salmon talked me into a lifestyle change") without evertroubling to test them against reality. When she finally does so bythrusting herself into the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian blood feud,she sees only what she passionately longs to see: "The vast majority ofPalestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhiannonviolent resistance."

In an act of unintended self-revelation, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" endswith a film clip of the 10-year-old Corrie prattling away like a babyrobot at her elementary school's Fifth Grade Press Conference on WorldHunger: "My dream is to give the poor a chance. . . . My dream can andwill come true if we all look into the future and see the light thatshines there." She grew older but no wiser, and in the end died a martyrto her own naivet..

Needless to say, political drama has an impeccable theatrical pedigree.Only last week New York playgoers were treated to the Roundabout Theatre'srevival of "Heartbreak House," the 1919 play in which George Bernard Shawsought to show on stage how the European leisure class plunged thatcontinent into a world war by heedlessly immersing itself in the pursuitof pleasure. But Shaw was a great (if erratic) writer who dramatized hisideas instead of merely asserting them. "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," bycontrast, is a scrappy, one-sided monologue consisting of nothing but thefugitive observations of a young woman who, like so many idealists,treated her emotions as facts. "I am disappointed," she declares, "thatthis is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate init. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world." Tomistake such jejune disillusion for profundity and turn it into the climaxof a full-length play is an act of piety, not artistry.The cancellation of last season's New York Theatre Workshop production of"My Name Is Rachel Corrie" triggered a noisy row in the New York theatercommunity, many of whose members jumped to the not-unreasonable conclusionthat the producers were cravenly bowing to backstage pressure from donorswho found the play's politics obnoxious. As a result, the belated openingof "Rachel Corrie" at the Minetta Lane Theatre has had the predictableresult of bringing it far more attention than it would otherwise havereceived.

That's the only lesson to be drawn from this exercise in theatricalineptitude. It is by far the worst political play I've covered in thisspace, not excluding Tim Robbins's "Embedded," and no amount of earnesthand-wringing can make it anything but dull.

Anti-Semitism is truly now more a phenomenon of the Left rather than theRight, but leave it to the present day academy to entertain the extremeright when it can be counted on to condemn Israel and the Jews. A groupcalled The Pacifica Forum sponsors talks at the University of Oregon, andone of their featured speakers this year is a man who describes himself asa white separatist and racialist, and who is also anti-Israel,anti-Semitic, and a Holocaust denier who finds "a lot of truth in MeinKampf." (registration may be required)

Other Pacifica Forum events at the university were talks on Holocaustdenier David Irving, and a program that featured a videotape on WilliamLuther Pierce, founder of the National Alliance white separatist group.

Programs described as "less controversial" this year have includedlectures and videos with such titles as "Israeli-American Militarism,""Kosher Apartheid" and "Washington, D.C.: Israeli-Occupied Territory."Last year's offerings included programs that blamed the Jews forKristallnacht.

Although the Pacifica Forum may sound leftish in some of its aspects.itsfounder describes himself as a lifelong pacifist.clearly it is in the campof the most extreme, utterly discredited, loony right, and yet it has aperch at the University of Oregon because the founder is a formerprofessor. The university does not intend to take any action and defendsthe forum's programs on the grounds of free speech. OK, as far as thatgoes, but a university also has an obligation to the truth, no?